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Collaborators
Poised on the brink of war, the people of the planet Bandar are stunned by the arrival of a disabled Terran space ship. But the Terrans are even less prepared to understand the politics, gender fluidity, or mob reflexes of the natives. The Terran captain uses increasing force as the only way to ensure desperately needed repairs. Hoping to bring enlightened human values to the natives, a young scientist's intervention leads to disaster.
After a vicious assault, a pregnant native becomes radicalized. A failed poet sees the Terran occupation as a way to gain the recognition he craves. A widow whose farm is bombed using Terran weaponry journeys to the capital in search of help and ends up facing a firing squad. And a reporter becomes the voice of the resistance, determined to take back his world from the invaders...
As violence escalates, the fate of both peoples rests with those who have suffered the most. Can they find a way to forgiveness…and peace?
Collaborators was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Finalist/James Tiptree Jr. Award recommended list.
After a vicious assault, a pregnant native becomes radicalized. A failed poet sees the Terran occupation as a way to gain the recognition he craves. A widow whose farm is bombed using Terran weaponry journeys to the capital in search of help and ends up facing a firing squad. And a reporter becomes the voice of the resistance, determined to take back his world from the invaders...
As violence escalates, the fate of both peoples rests with those who have suffered the most. Can they find a way to forgiveness…and peace?
Collaborators was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Finalist/James Tiptree Jr. Award recommended list.
- GenresScience Fiction
362 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2013
2 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 28, 2016
Collaborators.
The first thought I had when sat down to write this review is what does this word mean? Traitors, opportunists, those French and Dutch and the others in Europe who supported the Nazis in World War II when their countries were occupied.
To collude, to conspire, to be in cahoots.
But, maybe I have seen too many World War II movies growing up.
I also remember that those who collaborate are those working together on an activity to create something. To cooperate, to join forces, to team up.
Collaboration is a term often used in composition circle as part of how to teach writing and to understand the writing process. To invent, to create, is a social act. Despite the romantic image of the poet in the garret, no story or poem or painting is solely the creation of one person. The books read and studied before, the people who influenced the creator—all contribute.
The second thought, or rather question I had was what does it mean to human? And how does one define being human? Just look in a mirror? We are homo sapiens, human beings, are we not?
But is human a state of the mind and the body? Does being self-aware count? Robert Heinlein in Star Beast offers a legal definition of being human: “Beings possessed of speech and manipulation must be presumed to be sentient and therefore to have innate human rights, unless conclusively proved otherwise” (167).
This broader context of what it means to be human is the one at work in this provocative novel. That Wheeler uses it to refer to the inhabitants of a planet that we—Terrans—would call alien, is, frankly, disturbing. These aliens, these citizens of Chacarre and Erlind (two nation states), seem to be like us—sort of, mostly, or rather just enough for assumptions to be made that aren’t questioned or examined until far too late. Their definition of “gender has a very different meaning and [their] instincts can drive a crowd to madness” (back cover).
Enter the crippled Terran spaceship and its well-meaning crew with all good intentions.
There are misunderstandings between the native species and the Terrans, misunderstandings that lead to violence and retaliation and interference and open conflict. “Soon everyone—scientists and soldiers, rebels and lovers, patriots and opportunists—are swept up in a cycle of destruction” (back cover). Who is at fault? And what does it mean to collaborate? To betray one’s species? Does loving an alien, as does Lexis, a Chacarran, and it seems, so CelestiniBellini, a Terran, make one a collaborator? And collaboration, cooperating, working together, joining forces, this seems to be the way to fight back—or is fighting the way to stop the violence? Can there be reconciliation? Peace?
Can something be created that is new and different? Of value? Is there common ground?
These two cultures, alien to each other, are explored in depth through the lives of such people on the planet as Hayke, a farmer, who follows a way of life, a philosophy—or is it a religion (there are echoes of Taoism and Christianity)—called the Way, Alon and Birre, lovers, then mates; their families, and Lexis, a professor who takes a Terran lover. On the ship, we find intense scientists, such as Vera Eisenstein, the resident genius, and her protégé, Sarah Davis, and Celestin Bellini, a soldier and Lexis’ lover, and the captain, Hammadi.
Can there be forgiveness? Compromise? Understanding? Will collaboration result in good or ill, no matter which definition is used, or is it somewhere in the murky middle?
This rich novel, with its “first-rate world-building from a writer gifted with a soaring imagination and good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder” (C.J. Cherryh, back cover) asks the reader to think and think again
The first thought I had when sat down to write this review is what does this word mean? Traitors, opportunists, those French and Dutch and the others in Europe who supported the Nazis in World War II when their countries were occupied.
To collude, to conspire, to be in cahoots.
But, maybe I have seen too many World War II movies growing up.
I also remember that those who collaborate are those working together on an activity to create something. To cooperate, to join forces, to team up.
Collaboration is a term often used in composition circle as part of how to teach writing and to understand the writing process. To invent, to create, is a social act. Despite the romantic image of the poet in the garret, no story or poem or painting is solely the creation of one person. The books read and studied before, the people who influenced the creator—all contribute.
The second thought, or rather question I had was what does it mean to human? And how does one define being human? Just look in a mirror? We are homo sapiens, human beings, are we not?
But is human a state of the mind and the body? Does being self-aware count? Robert Heinlein in Star Beast offers a legal definition of being human: “Beings possessed of speech and manipulation must be presumed to be sentient and therefore to have innate human rights, unless conclusively proved otherwise” (167).
This broader context of what it means to be human is the one at work in this provocative novel. That Wheeler uses it to refer to the inhabitants of a planet that we—Terrans—would call alien, is, frankly, disturbing. These aliens, these citizens of Chacarre and Erlind (two nation states), seem to be like us—sort of, mostly, or rather just enough for assumptions to be made that aren’t questioned or examined until far too late. Their definition of “gender has a very different meaning and [their] instincts can drive a crowd to madness” (back cover).
Enter the crippled Terran spaceship and its well-meaning crew with all good intentions.
There are misunderstandings between the native species and the Terrans, misunderstandings that lead to violence and retaliation and interference and open conflict. “Soon everyone—scientists and soldiers, rebels and lovers, patriots and opportunists—are swept up in a cycle of destruction” (back cover). Who is at fault? And what does it mean to collaborate? To betray one’s species? Does loving an alien, as does Lexis, a Chacarran, and it seems, so CelestiniBellini, a Terran, make one a collaborator? And collaboration, cooperating, working together, joining forces, this seems to be the way to fight back—or is fighting the way to stop the violence? Can there be reconciliation? Peace?
Can something be created that is new and different? Of value? Is there common ground?
These two cultures, alien to each other, are explored in depth through the lives of such people on the planet as Hayke, a farmer, who follows a way of life, a philosophy—or is it a religion (there are echoes of Taoism and Christianity)—called the Way, Alon and Birre, lovers, then mates; their families, and Lexis, a professor who takes a Terran lover. On the ship, we find intense scientists, such as Vera Eisenstein, the resident genius, and her protégé, Sarah Davis, and Celestin Bellini, a soldier and Lexis’ lover, and the captain, Hammadi.
Can there be forgiveness? Compromise? Understanding? Will collaboration result in good or ill, no matter which definition is used, or is it somewhere in the murky middle?
This rich novel, with its “first-rate world-building from a writer gifted with a soaring imagination and good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder” (C.J. Cherryh, back cover) asks the reader to think and think again
May 28, 2013
An intriguing exploration into the consequences of first contact between races when both consider themselves to be "human." The first, the Terran, are the more familiar type, and then we're introduced to those from Chacarre, who are intersexed and, while capable of "polarizing" into either gender, do not always do so. The new race is handled with care and detail and their traditions and beliefs are fascinating and well-drawn.
Deborah wields her usual deft touch when it comes to emotional moments and explores an array of relationships, including the love between mates, the loss of children or those equally loved, and the dangerous attraction between the races.
All in all, Collaborators is an adventurous romp on a world both like and unlike our own and an examination into the sometimes devastating consequences of cultural misunderstandings and the good that can arise when compassion and cooperation come to the fore.
Deborah wields her usual deft touch when it comes to emotional moments and explores an array of relationships, including the love between mates, the loss of children or those equally loved, and the dangerous attraction between the races.
All in all, Collaborators is an adventurous romp on a world both like and unlike our own and an examination into the sometimes devastating consequences of cultural misunderstandings and the good that can arise when compassion and cooperation come to the fore.
December 28, 2015
Interesting first contact story with strong characterisation and thoughtful consideration of resulting ripple effect through culture and political systems. The default to a universal he pronoun to describe the aliens, who are hermaphroditic unless they're reproducing detracted from am otherwise interesting consideration of diverse gender roles. The novel is at its strongest when it is deep in the interpersonal relationships of its alien and human ensemble cast, but ultimately the worldbuilding required greater suspension of disbelief than I could manage.
October 9, 2020
I first read and reviewed Collaborators (Dragon Moon Press, 2013) in 2016. When I learned that Deborah Ross was re-releasing a revised and expanded version of the novel, I found myself curious as what she had changed, what had expanded and rethought. I decided I needed to revisit my own thinking. I wondered what I might expand and rethink.
Re-reading my earlier review, I found myself in conversation with what I written four years ago. That review began with a rumination on two of the novel’s overarching questions, the first: what is a collaborator? The second, a perennial theme in science fiction, what does it mean to be human? Now, I found myself expanding the second question to consider how gender affects being human. I am also adding another overarching question or issue, the nature of power, and its use abuse.
Collaboration can be both a positive and negative act.
To collaborate is “to work jointly on an activity, especially to produce or create something.” This takes me to my graduate training in rhetoric and composition, as collaboration, in composition or writing studies, is often discussed as part of how one teaches writing and comes to understand the writing process. To invent, to create, is a social act. Despite the romantic image of the poet in the garret, no story or poem or painting is solely the creation of one person. The books read and studied before, the people who influenced the creator, the sociocultural context of the creator—all contribute in the making of meaning. Those who collaborate are those work together on an activity to create something.
Not all collaboration, however, is so benign and generative. The second definition offered by Google is to “cooperate traitorously with an enemy.” As I did in my first review, I find myself remembering World War II and those traitors and opportunists—those collaborators—who supported the Nazis in World War II when their countries were occupied. This story, in a broader sense of the many ways people responded to the Nazis, is at the heart of the novel. I would go even further. This story is foundational to the novel. Ross includes four Bonus essays at the end, discussing key issues and themes in greater detail. In the essay, “World-building in Collaborators, I learned that Ross and her family lived in Lyon, France, for “about nine months.” This experience illuminates the novel in two key ways. The first way is the city of Lyon itself. Its culture and history echo in the alien city of Miraz. The other key way is the history of Lyon, especially during the German occupation in World War II. She became “interested in how many varied ways the French responded to the German occupation. Some protested from the very beginning for religious or ethical reasons, but others went along” for a variety of reasons, including “fear or apathy or entrenched antisemitism,” and others “sought to exploit the situation for personal power or financial gain” (394). Eventually this interest and the research that come from it, convinced Ross that she “had to tell this story,” and as a science fiction and fantasy writer, she chose to do so in the “genre [she] knew” (395).
The novel begins with First Contact, a perennial science fiction theme. A news flash from Miraz, the capital of Chacarre: “Space ships sighted over Chacarre,” There has been “a flurry of communication” between Chacarre and Erlind, the neighboring country, a rival, sometime an enemy of Chacarre (5). This national news story results initially in individual action. Hayke, a farmer, and his children, go out at night to see if they can see signs of the alien arrival in the night sky. One of his children sees “an unwinking mote of light” in the northeast sky (6).
Aliens have arrived. They are us, Terrans. The starship, Prometheus, seems to have an unfortunate encounter with a “hidden ‘dark’ hole”. Repairs are needed and the planet, below named Bandar by the Terrans, seems to have “an adequate manufacturing capability” to help with repairs. No Prime Directive here, the Terrans “offer to trade technological knowledge for certain items to be manufactured to [their] specifications” (19).
This brings the reader to the question of being human and gender, and to the issues of power.
Ross is using, I would argue, a very broad definition of being human, akin to the legal one Robert Heinlein uses in Star Beast: “Beings possessed of speech and manipulation must be presumed to be sentient and therefore to have innate human rights, unless conclusively proved otherwise” (167). The Bandari speak of themselves as human, and wonder if we are. That Ross uses it to refer to the inhabitants of a planet that we—Terrans—would call alien, is, frankly, oddly disturbing. These aliens, these citizens of Chacarre and Erlind seem to be like us—sort of, mostly, or rather just enough for assumptions to be made that aren’t questioned or examined until far too late. Gender is a dominant feature in how we see ourselves. For the Bandari, their definition of “gender has a very different meaning and [their] instincts can drive a crowd to madness” (back cover). They are gender-fluid, and do not divide themselves into two genders, rather “every other age-appropriate person is a potential lover and life mate” and “in a life-paired couple, each is equally likely to engender or gestate a child” (402).
Yes, I heard echoes of Le Guin and The Left Hand of Darkness. One key
difference is that Le Guin’s Gethenians are humans, descended from the Hainish as we Terrans are. Another key difference and perhaps of more importance, is that Le Guin’s Gethenians are only sexually active when in kemmer. For Ross’s Bandari, “Sex [is] something [they] enjoy often and enthusiastically with their age-mate friends,” and this can lead to a “permanent lifelong pairing” (403). For Terran humans, understanding this sexuality will be difficult, to say the least.
There are misunderstandings between the native species and the Terrans, misunderstandings that lead to violence and retaliation and interference and open conflict. “Soon everyone—scientists and soldiers, rebels and lovers, patriots and opportunists—are swept up in a cycle of destruction” (back cover). Who is at fault? And what does it mean to collaborate? To betray one’s species? Does loving an alien, as does Lexis, a Chacarran, and it seems, so CelestiniBellini, a Terran, make one a collaborator? And collaboration, cooperating, working together, joining forces, this seems to be the way to fight back—or is fighting the way to stop the violence? Can there be reconciliation? Peace?
Can something be created that is new and different? Of value? Is there common ground?
And the issue of power? How is power used and abused by both the Terrans and the Bandari. The Terrans have “the power of advanced technology, the power of military superiority…” Both species have “the power of idealism, power that comes from love, power that comes from political advantage …and especially power that relates to gender” (401). What happens when powerful technology encounters the power of love, idealism, and morality? What happens when greater physical power and strength misreads a gender-fluid people as binary? Weapons can kill the silent witnesses that come to protest at the Terran compound, but will weapons stifle the power of that silence?
These two cultures, alien to each other, are explored in depth through the lives of such people on the planet as the aforementioned Hayke, a farmer, who follows a way of life, a philosophy—or is it a religion (there are echoes of Taoism and Quakers)—called the Way, Alon and Birre, lovers, then mates; their families, and Lexis, a professor who takes a Terran lover. On the ship, we find intense scientists, such as Vera Eisenstein, the resident genius, and her protégé, Sarah Davis, and Celestin Bellini, a soldier and Lexis’ lover, and the captain, Hammadi.
Can there be forgiveness? Compromise? Understanding? Will collaboration result in good or ill, no matter which definition is used, or is it somewhere in the murky middle?
Ross didn’t make radical changes in the plot from 2013 to 2020. But, these people—Terran and Bandari—they are deeper, layered, and thus more dynamic. When Alon grieves for his (admittedly not an accurate pronoun, as Ross notes) lost child, we experience the stages of grief with him. He lost his unborn child in a horrific way. Is what happened forgivable? Are there things that are unforgiveable?
This rich novel, with its “first-rate world-building from a writer gifted with a soaring imagination and good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder” (C.J. Cherryh, back cover) asks the reader to think and think again. Read Collaborators again, if like me, you read the first version. You will be rewarded with a stronger, more nuanced, and a more passionate story. Read the Bonus sections at the end—and experience world-building, and species construction. Take the time mull over gender and power and collaboration. Be prepared to keep reading. This novel is a real page-turner.
Highly recommended.
Re-reading my earlier review, I found myself in conversation with what I written four years ago. That review began with a rumination on two of the novel’s overarching questions, the first: what is a collaborator? The second, a perennial theme in science fiction, what does it mean to be human? Now, I found myself expanding the second question to consider how gender affects being human. I am also adding another overarching question or issue, the nature of power, and its use abuse.
Collaboration can be both a positive and negative act.
To collaborate is “to work jointly on an activity, especially to produce or create something.” This takes me to my graduate training in rhetoric and composition, as collaboration, in composition or writing studies, is often discussed as part of how one teaches writing and comes to understand the writing process. To invent, to create, is a social act. Despite the romantic image of the poet in the garret, no story or poem or painting is solely the creation of one person. The books read and studied before, the people who influenced the creator, the sociocultural context of the creator—all contribute in the making of meaning. Those who collaborate are those work together on an activity to create something.
Not all collaboration, however, is so benign and generative. The second definition offered by Google is to “cooperate traitorously with an enemy.” As I did in my first review, I find myself remembering World War II and those traitors and opportunists—those collaborators—who supported the Nazis in World War II when their countries were occupied. This story, in a broader sense of the many ways people responded to the Nazis, is at the heart of the novel. I would go even further. This story is foundational to the novel. Ross includes four Bonus essays at the end, discussing key issues and themes in greater detail. In the essay, “World-building in Collaborators, I learned that Ross and her family lived in Lyon, France, for “about nine months.” This experience illuminates the novel in two key ways. The first way is the city of Lyon itself. Its culture and history echo in the alien city of Miraz. The other key way is the history of Lyon, especially during the German occupation in World War II. She became “interested in how many varied ways the French responded to the German occupation. Some protested from the very beginning for religious or ethical reasons, but others went along” for a variety of reasons, including “fear or apathy or entrenched antisemitism,” and others “sought to exploit the situation for personal power or financial gain” (394). Eventually this interest and the research that come from it, convinced Ross that she “had to tell this story,” and as a science fiction and fantasy writer, she chose to do so in the “genre [she] knew” (395).
The novel begins with First Contact, a perennial science fiction theme. A news flash from Miraz, the capital of Chacarre: “Space ships sighted over Chacarre,” There has been “a flurry of communication” between Chacarre and Erlind, the neighboring country, a rival, sometime an enemy of Chacarre (5). This national news story results initially in individual action. Hayke, a farmer, and his children, go out at night to see if they can see signs of the alien arrival in the night sky. One of his children sees “an unwinking mote of light” in the northeast sky (6).
Aliens have arrived. They are us, Terrans. The starship, Prometheus, seems to have an unfortunate encounter with a “hidden ‘dark’ hole”. Repairs are needed and the planet, below named Bandar by the Terrans, seems to have “an adequate manufacturing capability” to help with repairs. No Prime Directive here, the Terrans “offer to trade technological knowledge for certain items to be manufactured to [their] specifications” (19).
This brings the reader to the question of being human and gender, and to the issues of power.
Ross is using, I would argue, a very broad definition of being human, akin to the legal one Robert Heinlein uses in Star Beast: “Beings possessed of speech and manipulation must be presumed to be sentient and therefore to have innate human rights, unless conclusively proved otherwise” (167). The Bandari speak of themselves as human, and wonder if we are. That Ross uses it to refer to the inhabitants of a planet that we—Terrans—would call alien, is, frankly, oddly disturbing. These aliens, these citizens of Chacarre and Erlind seem to be like us—sort of, mostly, or rather just enough for assumptions to be made that aren’t questioned or examined until far too late. Gender is a dominant feature in how we see ourselves. For the Bandari, their definition of “gender has a very different meaning and [their] instincts can drive a crowd to madness” (back cover). They are gender-fluid, and do not divide themselves into two genders, rather “every other age-appropriate person is a potential lover and life mate” and “in a life-paired couple, each is equally likely to engender or gestate a child” (402).
Yes, I heard echoes of Le Guin and The Left Hand of Darkness. One key
difference is that Le Guin’s Gethenians are humans, descended from the Hainish as we Terrans are. Another key difference and perhaps of more importance, is that Le Guin’s Gethenians are only sexually active when in kemmer. For Ross’s Bandari, “Sex [is] something [they] enjoy often and enthusiastically with their age-mate friends,” and this can lead to a “permanent lifelong pairing” (403). For Terran humans, understanding this sexuality will be difficult, to say the least.
There are misunderstandings between the native species and the Terrans, misunderstandings that lead to violence and retaliation and interference and open conflict. “Soon everyone—scientists and soldiers, rebels and lovers, patriots and opportunists—are swept up in a cycle of destruction” (back cover). Who is at fault? And what does it mean to collaborate? To betray one’s species? Does loving an alien, as does Lexis, a Chacarran, and it seems, so CelestiniBellini, a Terran, make one a collaborator? And collaboration, cooperating, working together, joining forces, this seems to be the way to fight back—or is fighting the way to stop the violence? Can there be reconciliation? Peace?
Can something be created that is new and different? Of value? Is there common ground?
And the issue of power? How is power used and abused by both the Terrans and the Bandari. The Terrans have “the power of advanced technology, the power of military superiority…” Both species have “the power of idealism, power that comes from love, power that comes from political advantage …and especially power that relates to gender” (401). What happens when powerful technology encounters the power of love, idealism, and morality? What happens when greater physical power and strength misreads a gender-fluid people as binary? Weapons can kill the silent witnesses that come to protest at the Terran compound, but will weapons stifle the power of that silence?
These two cultures, alien to each other, are explored in depth through the lives of such people on the planet as the aforementioned Hayke, a farmer, who follows a way of life, a philosophy—or is it a religion (there are echoes of Taoism and Quakers)—called the Way, Alon and Birre, lovers, then mates; their families, and Lexis, a professor who takes a Terran lover. On the ship, we find intense scientists, such as Vera Eisenstein, the resident genius, and her protégé, Sarah Davis, and Celestin Bellini, a soldier and Lexis’ lover, and the captain, Hammadi.
Can there be forgiveness? Compromise? Understanding? Will collaboration result in good or ill, no matter which definition is used, or is it somewhere in the murky middle?
Ross didn’t make radical changes in the plot from 2013 to 2020. But, these people—Terran and Bandari—they are deeper, layered, and thus more dynamic. When Alon grieves for his (admittedly not an accurate pronoun, as Ross notes) lost child, we experience the stages of grief with him. He lost his unborn child in a horrific way. Is what happened forgivable? Are there things that are unforgiveable?
This rich novel, with its “first-rate world-building from a writer gifted with a soaring imagination and good old-fashioned Sense of Wonder” (C.J. Cherryh, back cover) asks the reader to think and think again. Read Collaborators again, if like me, you read the first version. You will be rewarded with a stronger, more nuanced, and a more passionate story. Read the Bonus sections at the end—and experience world-building, and species construction. Take the time mull over gender and power and collaboration. Be prepared to keep reading. This novel is a real page-turner.
Highly recommended.
August 3, 2021
I gave up on this book after the 3rd consecutive instance of "Terran men are all rapists at heart." One badly-written scene like that I could have lived with, but after the third I was thoroughly tired of how the author was setting up a source of conflict between the natives and the Terrans in an unbelievable way.
I was struggling to remain interested in the book by then anyway. I only continued because the basic premise, first contact between hermaphroditic aliens with some interesting physiological quirks and humans, was moderately interesting.
The largest problem was that the viewpoint shifted rapidly between multiple minor characters. Over and over again I found myself asking "who is this person? Why am I reading about them?" I was having trouble keeping many of the characters straight because the book spent so little time on them, and no effort at trying to develop them as people.
It seems like almost every instance of conflict in the book was due to stupidity. For example, in the first men-are-rapists scene, the men have been drinking the local wine, which is well established to have some pretty nasty stuff in it that the aliens can handle and humans can't. The exchange afterwards runs "they shouldn't have drunk the wine." "How dare you tell them they can't drink local wine!" Instead of replying "because it's laced with PCP," the response is "I dunno."
The largest example of this is the developing Terran "occupation." We don't get a lot of time with Terran characters, but it's clear they're not interested in acting like conquerors, yet shortly afterward they are, for no apparent reason.
There's also the problem that the aliens, despite being alien, aren't nearly alien enough. They're essentially humans in every aspect except being hermaphroditic. When "polarized" as females, they grow breasts and hips, which aren't just terrestrial, they're very specifically human secondary sexual characteristics. While all mammals have teats, only humans develop visible breasts. Our closest relatives, chimps and gorillas don't have either one.
The author has the aliens do this, of course, so the Terran men can get sexually excited by them. The Moties in "The Mote In God's Eye" are hermaphroditic, but none of the humans start thinking about raping them, because, y'know, they're aliens.
The "science" part of the SF in this book is rather weak that way. For example, we've got lasers with a "stun" setting, with no plausible explanation of how that would work. I think the author spent too much time watching Star Trek, which is ironic since Star Trek introduced Phasers specifically because Roddenberry knew that a laser couldn't do that. The "aliens that are basically humans with bumpy noses that we can DEFINITELY have sex with" is also a Star Trek trope.
I was struggling to remain interested in the book by then anyway. I only continued because the basic premise, first contact between hermaphroditic aliens with some interesting physiological quirks and humans, was moderately interesting.
The largest problem was that the viewpoint shifted rapidly between multiple minor characters. Over and over again I found myself asking "who is this person? Why am I reading about them?" I was having trouble keeping many of the characters straight because the book spent so little time on them, and no effort at trying to develop them as people.
It seems like almost every instance of conflict in the book was due to stupidity. For example, in the first men-are-rapists scene, the men have been drinking the local wine, which is well established to have some pretty nasty stuff in it that the aliens can handle and humans can't. The exchange afterwards runs "they shouldn't have drunk the wine." "How dare you tell them they can't drink local wine!" Instead of replying "because it's laced with PCP," the response is "I dunno."
The largest example of this is the developing Terran "occupation." We don't get a lot of time with Terran characters, but it's clear they're not interested in acting like conquerors, yet shortly afterward they are, for no apparent reason.
There's also the problem that the aliens, despite being alien, aren't nearly alien enough. They're essentially humans in every aspect except being hermaphroditic. When "polarized" as females, they grow breasts and hips, which aren't just terrestrial, they're very specifically human secondary sexual characteristics. While all mammals have teats, only humans develop visible breasts. Our closest relatives, chimps and gorillas don't have either one.
The author has the aliens do this, of course, so the Terran men can get sexually excited by them. The Moties in "The Mote In God's Eye" are hermaphroditic, but none of the humans start thinking about raping them, because, y'know, they're aliens.
The "science" part of the SF in this book is rather weak that way. For example, we've got lasers with a "stun" setting, with no plausible explanation of how that would work. I think the author spent too much time watching Star Trek, which is ironic since Star Trek introduced Phasers specifically because Roddenberry knew that a laser couldn't do that. The "aliens that are basically humans with bumpy noses that we can DEFINITELY have sex with" is also a Star Trek trope.
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July 19, 2021A Word from the author: Power, Gender, and Sexuality in Collaborators
Collaborators is an occupation-and-resistance novel set on a far-distant planet. The action pits the crew of a Terran spaceship, with all their scientific superiority, against the native race, at a much lower technology level. Very early in the writing process, I realized that in order to talk about the uses and abuses of power, I had to address the issue of gender. I wanted to create a resonance between the tensions arising from First Contact and those arising from gender expectations. What if the native race did not divide themselves into genders? How would that work – biologically? romantically? socially? politically? How would it affect the division of labor? child-rearing? How many ways would Terrans misinterpret a race for whom every other age-appropriate person is a potential lover? Or, in a life-paired couple, each partner equally likely to engender or gestate a child?
For my alien race in Collaborators, I also wanted sexuality to be important. I decided that young adults would be androgynous in appearance and highly sexual. Sex would be something they’d enjoy often and enthusiastically with their age-mates. However, the intense intimacy created by sex exclusively with the same person would lead to a cascade of emotional and physiological effects resulting in a permanent, lifelong pairing. The pairing, a biological bond obvious to everyone around the couple, would lead to polarization with accompanying mood swings, aggression, inability to focus. Each partner would appear more “female” or “male,” which would inevitably set up occasions for misunderstanding with Terrans, who think and react in terms of those divisions. The natives, on the other hand, would wonder how people who are permanently polarized can get any work done, and react to Terran women as if they were all pregnant, and therefore to be protected at all costs because their own birth rate is low.
Just as we’ve instituted the canonical Talk about the birds and the bees, or sex ed in schools, so the natives would have traditions of preparing their young people, trying to ensure that pairing does not have disastrous political or inter-clan consequences. We know how badly that works in humans, so it’s likely to be equally ineffective with native teenagers, too.
Collaborators is an occupation-and-resistance novel set on a far-distant planet. The action pits the crew of a Terran spaceship, with all their scientific superiority, against the native race, at a much lower technology level. Very early in the writing process, I realized that in order to talk about the uses and abuses of power, I had to address the issue of gender. I wanted to create a resonance between the tensions arising from First Contact and those arising from gender expectations. What if the native race did not divide themselves into genders? How would that work – biologically? romantically? socially? politically? How would it affect the division of labor? child-rearing? How many ways would Terrans misinterpret a race for whom every other age-appropriate person is a potential lover? Or, in a life-paired couple, each partner equally likely to engender or gestate a child?
For my alien race in Collaborators, I also wanted sexuality to be important. I decided that young adults would be androgynous in appearance and highly sexual. Sex would be something they’d enjoy often and enthusiastically with their age-mates. However, the intense intimacy created by sex exclusively with the same person would lead to a cascade of emotional and physiological effects resulting in a permanent, lifelong pairing. The pairing, a biological bond obvious to everyone around the couple, would lead to polarization with accompanying mood swings, aggression, inability to focus. Each partner would appear more “female” or “male,” which would inevitably set up occasions for misunderstanding with Terrans, who think and react in terms of those divisions. The natives, on the other hand, would wonder how people who are permanently polarized can get any work done, and react to Terran women as if they were all pregnant, and therefore to be protected at all costs because their own birth rate is low.
Just as we’ve instituted the canonical Talk about the birds and the bees, or sex ed in schools, so the natives would have traditions of preparing their young people, trying to ensure that pairing does not have disastrous political or inter-clan consequences. We know how badly that works in humans, so it’s likely to be equally ineffective with native teenagers, too.
September 4, 2020
I loved this book. Deborah Wheeler has created a full world in which the aliens are truly alien due to their ultimate lack of permanent gender, yet essentially human in terms of their emotional development. Each individual is complex and fascinating, stranded human or Bandar native, and exquisitely real.
The story is fascinating and the plot carries you along. Wheeler is one of those rare authors who can make what is essentially a political story completely about its characters. A Terran captain and her crew crash land in the midst of a Cold War situation turning hot inhabited by a species as advanced as the Terrans in nearly everything but some technologies. In many ways, they may be more advanced culturally.
The Terrans and the natives clash as the two main countries do and the individuals caught in the web of politics and the most basic of family relationships must find a way to survive while not losing what matters most.
The story is fascinating and the plot carries you along. Wheeler is one of those rare authors who can make what is essentially a political story completely about its characters. A Terran captain and her crew crash land in the midst of a Cold War situation turning hot inhabited by a species as advanced as the Terrans in nearly everything but some technologies. In many ways, they may be more advanced culturally.
The Terrans and the natives clash as the two main countries do and the individuals caught in the web of politics and the most basic of family relationships must find a way to survive while not losing what matters most.
dnf
August 2, 2021Quit reading solely because the story's just not catching my interest. It seems well-enough written, and the multi-gendered aliens kept me reading for a while, but overall it's just not working for me.
October 31, 2020
Collaborators follows the social and political fallout of first contact between an alien spaceship crewed by powerful and technologically advanced spacefarers and the population of farmers, poets, book-sellers, and diplomats on whose politically volatile planet the spacefarers land. The twist: the spacecraft is crewed by Terran humans from our solar system, and the unsuspecting natives are the alien population of the planet Bandar. The Terrans try to remain neutral, but the political situation in Chacarre is especially unstable, and they soon transition from visitors to invaders. The occupation of Chacarre quickly spawns an insurgency that turns friends to foes and lovers to enemies, and threatens to wipe out the entirety of the Terran expedition.
Collaborators immediately sets itself apart from standard first contact type stories by focusing primarily on the alien perspective. Human characters feature heavily in the first few chapters, but no sooner have we come to know and like the Terran astronauts than Ross subverts our expectations by whisking us out of the relative familiarity of the Terran-crewed spaceship and drawing us into the rich and complex world of the Bandari aliens as they grapple with the effects of Terran occupation on their already fractious society.
It is in the interactions between the Bandaris that Ross reveals a mastery of world building which rests firmly on her background as a biologist and international traveler. The Bandari feel simultaneously alien and human, with single-sex bodies that exhibit sexual dimorphism only when they are pregnant or in heat and a single-gender culture that is as exotic as their urban, clan-based society is familiar.
Ross strikes a neat balance between humor and thoughtfulness in the scenes when the Chacarran diplomat Ferro first meets with the Terran landing crew. How does one read emotion on the face of a creature without a crest? He wonders. What kind of civilization crews a spacecraft with pregnant personnel?
The characters - both Chacarran and Terran - come through vividly and sympathetically, each the hero of their own story, each painfully ill-equipped to understand the needs and customs of the aliens with which they are suddenly forced to interact.
At its core, Collaborators is a tragic tale of cultural misunderstandings and a compelling journey into how they can be fixed.
Collaborators immediately sets itself apart from standard first contact type stories by focusing primarily on the alien perspective. Human characters feature heavily in the first few chapters, but no sooner have we come to know and like the Terran astronauts than Ross subverts our expectations by whisking us out of the relative familiarity of the Terran-crewed spaceship and drawing us into the rich and complex world of the Bandari aliens as they grapple with the effects of Terran occupation on their already fractious society.
It is in the interactions between the Bandaris that Ross reveals a mastery of world building which rests firmly on her background as a biologist and international traveler. The Bandari feel simultaneously alien and human, with single-sex bodies that exhibit sexual dimorphism only when they are pregnant or in heat and a single-gender culture that is as exotic as their urban, clan-based society is familiar.
Ross strikes a neat balance between humor and thoughtfulness in the scenes when the Chacarran diplomat Ferro first meets with the Terran landing crew. How does one read emotion on the face of a creature without a crest? He wonders. What kind of civilization crews a spacecraft with pregnant personnel?
The characters - both Chacarran and Terran - come through vividly and sympathetically, each the hero of their own story, each painfully ill-equipped to understand the needs and customs of the aliens with which they are suddenly forced to interact.
At its core, Collaborators is a tragic tale of cultural misunderstandings and a compelling journey into how they can be fixed.
January 9, 2021
This book took me by surprise. It's about First Contact, yes, and I expected lots of conflict, but maybe not quite this kind. Neither did I expect anywhere near this thoughtful a treatment of the issues of trust between two peoples of different species, outlook, religious views, technology levels, and gender divisions. The Terrans arrive aboard a crippled space ship in desperate need of repairs, and land in the middle of a developing war on the planet Bandar. To them, the locals -are- yokels, useful if they can be cajoled or tricked or forced into helping the Terrans build the replacement parts their ship so badly needs if they are ever to get home again. Annoying when they get in the way or fail to cooperate. Dangerous when they begin to fight back. Still, though hampered by their own ignorance and arrogance and desperation, the Terrans have nowhere else to go. The local conflict provides opportunities, but which side of the war should they take? What do they offer either side? And when they meet resistance, how far should they go to get their way? Bandar's natives are in many ways more civilized than their visitors, if less advanced in terms of tech. They are also gender-fluid in ways that humans find hard to understand, in physical or social terms. Answers must be found. Many natives are followers of the Way, which has much in common with taoism but remains nearly invisible even to other natives of Bandar, enabling resistance in a truly underground fashion. The various factions are pushed into making poor decisions all around, ranging from sabotage and rape to terrorist attacks and political opportunism of a kind highly recognizable in current events right here and now. Yet the characters are never cartoons. Instead, they are so carefully drawn you can see the world through each set of eyes, feel its winds caress your skin, smell the wine, taste the food, listen to the poetry, and be yourself engulfed in their struggles with love and hate and confusion. I won't spoil the ending for you except to say how surprising and refreshing that was too, as the most unlikely of the people involved in all this find their way to accommodation, to trust, respect, and acceptance of loss in the hope of a future that's not built on bloody revenge. Highly recommended.
June 19, 2021
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. Just could not get into it. I gave it an honest try, reading about a third. Had to ask myself why I was continuing to slog through this. Simply too complicated with weak charachter development.
March 25, 2013
COLLABORATORS does something I’ve never seen in a first contact story. We’ve got plenty of first contact stories where humans (Terrans) do the outreach and the aliens have the dominant point of view. But I’d never seen a premise that thought so deeply about the alien culture and what sociopolitical chain reactions First Contact would set in motion.
When the aliens are the ones who come to Earth, they happen to pick the capital city of a major continent. Or they appear over every major city at once. Or they show up in an isolated cornfield or strawberry patch. But then the story zooms in tight on that city, or those cities, or that cornfield, and the larger societal picture is forgotten.
In COLLABORATORS, the Terrans choose an arbitrary landing spot, and have no idea that it sparks off an uneasy tension between two rival nations. The unchosen are immediately suspicious, asking questions like: Why did the aliens make first contact with them and not with us? Are they giving them advanced technology to use against us? Are our enemies going to bias the aliens against us?
It’s decided that a diplomatic faction must travel into hostile territory to engage the Terrans, to make sure they see both sides of the international conflict; to keep the enemies from skewing their perceptions of the political climate.
I thought this was brilliant. Because yes, of course. Of course it would.
The Terrans, meanwhile, have no idea they’ve been the catalyst to the possible ruin of a tenuous peace. They know nothing about the inhabitants of this world in advance. By giving human context to the advanced society they meet, they blind themselves to the differences between their species. Assumptions beget misunderstandings, which beget more understandings, and tensions between the three separate cultures escalate nearly to the point of no return.
Deborah gives us a lush world, compassionately populates it with real and complex beings, and shows her skill as a master craftswoman and storyteller.
When the aliens are the ones who come to Earth, they happen to pick the capital city of a major continent. Or they appear over every major city at once. Or they show up in an isolated cornfield or strawberry patch. But then the story zooms in tight on that city, or those cities, or that cornfield, and the larger societal picture is forgotten.
In COLLABORATORS, the Terrans choose an arbitrary landing spot, and have no idea that it sparks off an uneasy tension between two rival nations. The unchosen are immediately suspicious, asking questions like: Why did the aliens make first contact with them and not with us? Are they giving them advanced technology to use against us? Are our enemies going to bias the aliens against us?
It’s decided that a diplomatic faction must travel into hostile territory to engage the Terrans, to make sure they see both sides of the international conflict; to keep the enemies from skewing their perceptions of the political climate.
I thought this was brilliant. Because yes, of course. Of course it would.
The Terrans, meanwhile, have no idea they’ve been the catalyst to the possible ruin of a tenuous peace. They know nothing about the inhabitants of this world in advance. By giving human context to the advanced society they meet, they blind themselves to the differences between their species. Assumptions beget misunderstandings, which beget more understandings, and tensions between the three separate cultures escalate nearly to the point of no return.
Deborah gives us a lush world, compassionately populates it with real and complex beings, and shows her skill as a master craftswoman and storyteller.
September 26, 2020
I missed Collaborators by Deborah J. Ross (then Deborah Wheeler) when it was originally published in 2013, but I'm grateful to have read the 2020 revised edition, which includes a map and appendices that illuminate the genesis and evolution of this acclaimed novel.
Collaborators takes a path into territory explored by Ursula K. Le Guin in her The Left Hand of Darkness novel as Ross's novel examines human-alien contact where the alien race has some markedly different characteristics. High on the list is that their sexual identity can ride in neutral with on-demand excursions into either of the two primary genders, so either partner in a pair can ultimately become pregnant.
Ross is a first-rate world builder. The aliens' customs, religion, sexuality, housing, cities, and politics are all fully fleshed out, giving the world a quite strong lived-in ambiance. But while the trappings of their lives, and some aspects of their core existence, are significantly different from what we're used to, they share the elements of life that would allow a species to flourish and dominate; they experience love, loyalty, pride, ambition, self-sacrifice, and empathy.
Along with those qualities come a few of the downsides; two countries vie for superiority, and some of the struggle comes from greed and the quest for power. The team from Earth tries to repair a starship while simultaneously their efforts to deal with an alien culture create a situation rife with misunderstandings.
Collaborators is an intriguing book that demands a thoughtful read and then pays back that effort with maximum interest because it's a compelling, engaging story about people Ross makes us care deeply about, whatever form they take.
Collaborators takes a path into territory explored by Ursula K. Le Guin in her The Left Hand of Darkness novel as Ross's novel examines human-alien contact where the alien race has some markedly different characteristics. High on the list is that their sexual identity can ride in neutral with on-demand excursions into either of the two primary genders, so either partner in a pair can ultimately become pregnant.
Ross is a first-rate world builder. The aliens' customs, religion, sexuality, housing, cities, and politics are all fully fleshed out, giving the world a quite strong lived-in ambiance. But while the trappings of their lives, and some aspects of their core existence, are significantly different from what we're used to, they share the elements of life that would allow a species to flourish and dominate; they experience love, loyalty, pride, ambition, self-sacrifice, and empathy.
Along with those qualities come a few of the downsides; two countries vie for superiority, and some of the struggle comes from greed and the quest for power. The team from Earth tries to repair a starship while simultaneously their efforts to deal with an alien culture create a situation rife with misunderstandings.
Collaborators is an intriguing book that demands a thoughtful read and then pays back that effort with maximum interest because it's a compelling, engaging story about people Ross makes us care deeply about, whatever form they take.
July 17, 2013
Thoughtful, beautifully written first contact sf novel about an alien culture that is Earthlike in some respects and very different in others. The alien culture is reminiscent, at least to me, of LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" in the respect that the aliens are assumed "male" unless pregnant and "pregnant" becomes its own gender classification. In addition to gender and human/alien perceptions and misconceptions, the novel deals with conflict and conflict resolution within the first contact narrative.
I found most of the characters memorable, and interesting - multiple character perspectives are not easy for writers to pull off and I think that the mileage on which ones are most memorable in any given book will vary from reader to reader. I did get "lost" once or twice in the story because there were a number of different character perspectives from chapter to chapter. But I wasn't out for long. The story is compelling and the worldbuilding is quite interesting - I particularly liked the way that Wheeler doesn't take the easy way out on the tougher first contact issues. There are no "magic" solutions to negotiation and building understanding. Highly recommended!
I found most of the characters memorable, and interesting - multiple character perspectives are not easy for writers to pull off and I think that the mileage on which ones are most memorable in any given book will vary from reader to reader. I did get "lost" once or twice in the story because there were a number of different character perspectives from chapter to chapter. But I wasn't out for long. The story is compelling and the worldbuilding is quite interesting - I particularly liked the way that Wheeler doesn't take the easy way out on the tougher first contact issues. There are no "magic" solutions to negotiation and building understanding. Highly recommended!
December 8, 2020
Deborah J. Ross opens Collaborators by flipping the script in a first contact scenario and not stopping there. In her story of a strange new world, the Terrans are the outsiders reaching in and the people of Chacarre and the Erlind are the normal, the everyday folk.
It’s through this flipped lens that the story first opens, a rare look at our version of humanity through the eyes of a different… humanity. Because, as details of this alien world get revealed, it becomes apparent that while some of the structures of Chacarran civilization are strikingly familiar, particularly in politics and protest, there are just as many cultural and biological differences, from gender constructs that transcend the binary on through to clan structures and societal languages hidden in the tremble of fur.
Deborah is an expert worldbuilder and the care and attention she pays to developing the specifics of Chacarran culture and the diverse viewpoints of her world helps to put a fresh frame a complex story of first contact, political machinations and a revolution that everybody, even the invaders, wants to see succeed.
It’s through this flipped lens that the story first opens, a rare look at our version of humanity through the eyes of a different… humanity. Because, as details of this alien world get revealed, it becomes apparent that while some of the structures of Chacarran civilization are strikingly familiar, particularly in politics and protest, there are just as many cultural and biological differences, from gender constructs that transcend the binary on through to clan structures and societal languages hidden in the tremble of fur.
Deborah is an expert worldbuilder and the care and attention she pays to developing the specifics of Chacarran culture and the diverse viewpoints of her world helps to put a fresh frame a complex story of first contact, political machinations and a revolution that everybody, even the invaders, wants to see succeed.
September 4, 2020
An intriguing exploration into the consequences of first contact between races when both consider themselves to be "human." The first, the Terran, are the more familiar type, and then we're introduced to those from Chacarre, who are intersexed and, while capable of "polarizing" into either gender, do not always do so. The new race is handled with care and detail and their traditions and beliefs are fascinating and well-drawn.
Deborah wields her usual deft touch when it comes to emotional moments and explores an array of relationships, including the love between mates, the loss of children or those equally loved, and the dangerous attraction between the races.
All in all, Collaborators is an adventurous romp on a world both like and unlike our own and an examination into the sometimes devastating consequences of cultural misunderstandings and the good that can arise when compassion and cooperation come to the fore.
Deborah wields her usual deft touch when it comes to emotional moments and explores an array of relationships, including the love between mates, the loss of children or those equally loved, and the dangerous attraction between the races.
All in all, Collaborators is an adventurous romp on a world both like and unlike our own and an examination into the sometimes devastating consequences of cultural misunderstandings and the good that can arise when compassion and cooperation come to the fore.
July 20, 2016
This was in some ways an interesting story, but the disconnect between the communications between the humans and the aliens is sometimes distant and sometimes very close, which is confusing, though I think it may be deliberate. This is another one of those sci-fi books where I was definitely struck while reading that the author was a female- which has often made me like some stories more, in fact- but this time the differences in perspective that gender can bring were not as well elucidated through the story itself and the ending just seemed too damn convenient.
March 24, 2014
1st contact story written from a native view point. The story is confusing at times . I did not enjoy the book.
November 23, 2014
Really enjoyable Sci-Fi!
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